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Results so far:
| Better | 34% | 35 votes | Total: 102 votes | |
| Worse | 66% | 67 votes |
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Add to FavoritesThe United States and Russia have engaged in a collaborative effort on many issues including nuclear weapons agreements, economic opportunities, counter-terrorism, North Korea, international crime, space exploration, energy and health since George W. Bush's Administration. There is no doubt that things have improved significantly especially in light of Russia's past historical record. It is a fact and it cannot be ignored that the United States and Russian relations are better than ever before the Bush Administration.
This is not in any attributable to George Bush, but to the resilient economic force in this Era of Globalization. The faltering economy of the Soviet Union and pressure from the West brought the former superpower to its knees and they knew that changes had to occur economically for their survival. Many communist party leaders disagreed with these abrupt changes and of these men, stands the former head of the KGB, Vladimir Putin clinging to a dying and bankrupt ideology based more on fear, force and control than anything else. There can be no doubt that Dmitry Medvedev is just a puppet fulfilling Putin's ideological agenda sending chills throughout the international arena and the Georgian conflict may just be the beginning in thwarting their neighboring, democratic, separatists regimes. The support of Iran, refusal of the European missile defense systems, hesitancy with North Korea dilemma, and more recently the claim of withdrawal from Georgia should all have be sufficient evidence and a clue that the Russians vehemently refuse to cooperate with Western ideas and change. It is a question of ideology and anti-Western sediment that has little if nothing to do with United States foreign relations or for that matter the particular Presidential Administrations?
The Bush Administration has dramatically improved relations with Russia, but the events transpiring today in Georgia signifies that Russia has finally asserted itself in regard to this separatist regime while the Ukraine and Belarus look on with fear with as the Russian army flexes its muscles. The United States has not experienced anything quite like this since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 when Jimmy Carter's response was to place a trade embargo on the Soviet Union and a boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow. War is out of the question because there is no real recourse other than diplomacy with a nuclear-packing country. Ultimately, Russia is going to do what it wants to do fulfilling a long-awaited agenda as the Western countries watch, wait and hope that escalation of hostilities does not occur.
Learn more about this author, Mark Mylod.
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Worse
Early on, I think relations between Russia and the US, at least superficially, improved during the Bush years.
As someone who is no fan of our soon to be former president, I am also well aware that the roots of the current deterioration in US-Ruso relations lie in the soil of the Clinton administration.
Bill Clinton and his advisers, in the wake of the Soviet collapse, blew a golden opportunity to bring Russia in from the cold and give it the respect it deserved as a still great military power.
Instead, they privately wrote Boris Yeltsin off a vodka saturated buffoon, and Russia herself as failed state.
They ignored the reality of Russia's vast natural resources and the potential they afforded her to regroup and reconfigure herself.
And they completely missed the boat on the possibility of a strong man like Vladimir Putin emerging on the scene.
The Clintonistas treated Russia with disdain, and all but ignored her legitimate interests in the Balkans.
It was Bill Clinton who put the wheels in motion for the missile defense system sites in Poland and the Czech Republican, something Russia has made very clear is totally unacceptable.
After those missteps and missed opportunities on the part of the Clintonistas, GW and "Vlad" did seem to hit it off and the possibility for improved relations seemed real.
But, sadly, those opportunities were also squandered over issues like Ukraine, Georgia, Bush's intention to go forward with Clinton's missile defense, and on going disagreement over how to best deal with Iran.
Whether President Obama can improve relations with Moscow remains to be seen, but improve them he must.
With India and Pakistan staring down each other's rifle barrels, not to mention nuclear silos, with the Taliban and al Qaeda resurgent in Afghanistan, with Pakistan on the verge of being a completely failed state, and with the Middle East, thanks to the war in Gaza, a tinderbox ready to explode, President Obama will have to find common ground and areas of agreement and compromise with Moscow, otherwise, he will have no hope of getting a handle on the multiple global crises that await him.
But, even if Obama succeeds in improving relations with Russia and engages her as a full and equal partner in addressing the challenges facing the world, it may all turn out to be too little too late.
Things are spiraling into chaos on so many fronts, especially throughout nuclear armed Southwest Asia, that it is not being melodramatic to say the world may be closer to crossing the nuclear threshold than it's been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis forty seven years ago.
Learn more about this author, Michael Cook.
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